Monday, April 27, 2015

Economics of Criminal Justice Reform & States Setting a Policy Agenda

Crime doesn’t pay, as the saying goes, but the taxpayers certainly do, as everyone knows.

With
a fiscal breaking point in sight and scant return on the investment,
the government, and voters, are finally admitting that our expensive and
disparate criminal justice system is saddled with ineffective laws and
practices that are draining state and local government budgets with
unequal results.

The a la carte menu of policies that need
mending, according to experts in the field, includes ending needless
laws, reducing prison populations, overhauling sentencing guidelines,
restructuring prosecutor and public defender workloads, reining in law
enforcement and ending conflict of interest practices in grand jury
proceedings.

The remedies are equally assorted. Waves of
legislation, ballot initiatives and executive actions are rolling across
America with the goal of giving law enforcement, the courts and prisons
a pragmatic makeover to relieve some of the pressure. It will take many
years to repair the system, but a sweeping effort to do so is already
underway.

And like a giant digital billboard in Times Square, it
is hard to ignore that this movement to retool the patchwork criminal
justice system in America is emerging as a rare bipartisan zeitgeist.

Even with some national heavy-hitters in
the mix, there is a grassroots component at work. Criminal justice
reform is just the latest major issue driven by policy efforts in an
overwhelming number of states and local communities, as a politically
divided and stagnant federal government mostly watches from the
sidelines.

This “think locally, act locally” activism has recently
led to new state laws on minimum wage, the environment, guns, marijuana
legalization, education, gay marriage and abortion issues, among many
others. We may not agree with some of those results, but we can at least
admit that while Washington has become the epicenter of government
inaction, the states and communities have become ground zero this decade
for policy change and new solutions.

No doubt congressional
gridlock since 2011 has helped create what arguably has become the most
sustained period of substantial state-led policy decisions since
Reconstruction. As expected, states rights advocates are euphoric about
that evolution.

The problems with the system are not new.
Reformers have long asked the moral question: Should a free society
allow anachronistic laws and unjustified prison sentences in non-violent
crimes to target minorities, or unnecessarily ruin the lives of young
people of any color who, for example, are caught with a small stash of
marijuana?

As relevant as those soul-searching inquiries may be,
taxpayer economics revolving around the criminal justice system is the
real catalyst for action during these fiscal belt-tightening times. The
burden placed on Americans to finance a system that spends too much time
and money to pursue, prosecute and jail non-violent offenders is a
driving force behind a movement spreading swiftly in the states.

These
economic factors and limited resources are contributing to many
Americans becoming more open-minded about reconsidering what is real
crime and what is fair punishment. Once voters shift, politicians have
little choice but to re-adjust their agendas, as well. The mainstream,
middle class appeal of new revenue streams being created by marijuana
legalization in the states is a signal that this trend is becoming the
new normal.

Ultimately, everyone should be for law and
order, but instead of wasting time on offenses that do not threaten
people or property, Americans want police and the courts to focus on
violent offenses and keeping their communities safe. With the help of
the Justice Center at The Council of State Governments, dozens of states, some conservative and some liberal, are doing just that.

Texas,
for instance, saved $443 million by decreasing the number of
non-violent substance abusers it incarcerates, opting to divert them to
treatment and education programs instead of prison.

“So instead of
sending (drug offenders) to jail where they did not get better, (Texas)
completely turned the whole system upside down,” Massachusetts state
Senate President Stan Rosenberg, a reform advocate, told a gathering of
the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce recently.

The good news looking forward is that the alliances among political opposites, as well as public opinion, demonstrate
the momentum in this arena is so powerful that even the gridlocked
Congress is likely to wise up and follow the states’ lead on criminal
justice reform. Republican Rand Paul is already making it an issue in
his campaign for president, and more White House contenders will surely
join the ranks before the Iowa caucuses are held next January.

[Update:
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is also enlisting in
the fight, calling for broad criminal justice reforms, including
universal use of body cameras by police, and measures to try to tackle
the nation's expensive and excessive incarceration rate].

But if
lasting change is to come, some experts contend the effort to remedy all
the complex problems within the legal system will have to expand beyond
voter-driven ballot initiatives, legislative recourse, judicial fiat on
the part of district attorneys and judges or executive action by
mayors, governors and the president.

The entire legal system, the
media, educators and other influencers also must rethink the
shortcomings “and consider what equal and fair justice means, and how
best to carry out the law,” legal scholar and attorney Jonathan Rapping
detailed for me in an interview.

While
laws, edicts or orders can lead to a successful quick fix, a wholesale
cultural change likely will follow a much longer timeline. Rapping drew a
vivid parallel between repairing the criminal justice system and the
evolution of the civil rights movement.

"For Martin Luther King, the end wasn't the signing of a law," Rapping said.

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About Me

I've covered the last three Presidents as a White House correspondent and political editor. I write about politics, government, domestic and foreign policy. I favor the voiceless, but left vs. right is not as important to me as right vs. wrong. For me journalism is an obligation, so occasionally I will blog what I learn here. I co-founded the Mouth of the Potomac blog at the New York Daily News, but now I have this one all to myself!